Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

Courtesy of digitalemur :

This post is public for a reason. Go ahead and pass on the info if you like!

So you've locked down your journal as much as you can in your user settings, and you've asked your friends not to repost comments they make on your LJ.

Maybe you've also installed some of the anti-Facebook Firefox add-ons while you were at it.

Can you make those damn twitter and Facebook boxes at the bottom of posts and comments go away?

Well yes, it appears maybe you can, in Firefox.

First, you install Greasemonkey, a scripting add-on for Firefox.

Then, you install DisConnect, a script that runs in Greasemonkey.

Then you restart your browser, and I think you may have to reload some entry pages, or maybe I started this post before I was done installing so those boxes still showed up.

This is also reportedly handy if you use a screenreader, or if you're one of those people who liked hitting tab-enter to post a comment, a behavior that changed for the worse with this particular LJ update.

Enjoy!

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And, joining the crowd of 'please do not cross-post me to FB and Twitter'... this little jobbie will make that MUCH EASIER.  Just Do It.  Thank you!

For the portion of my friendslist who haven't seen this already, there's been some kerfuffle about LJ firing its American coding staff and concerns that this signifies imminent collapse.  bryant  (friend of a friend) put together a useful post with links and instructions on how to back up your LiveJournal entries and comments.  Since I've got a good 2 years worth of stuff on here, I figure backing up is a good plan anyway; I used ljdump, which generates XML files of the entries and the comments.  It would take some reconstructing to put it all back the way it was, but presumably one could do it.  The most important thing for me is saving all that text!

Yow!  Three people were (as far as I know) randomly shot this morning out on El Camino, about half a mile from our house, between us and nezumiko .  Non-fatal, but nonetheless, this was literally a little too close to home.  News story is here.

Meanwhile, note to self: 50-ml conical tubes are not compatible with the fixed-angle Sorvall rotor in my new lab.  I think I might actually have known that some time ago; I guess I've been reminded now.

(Anyone know why Firefox 3.0 insists on trying to break URLs if I put them in via Rich Text?  It's really kind of annoying.  The little 'edit URL' box reappears when I add tags or try to post or do anything in the box below the entry area, and insists on putting a 'javascript void' error where the html tag ought to be.)